It's a good time to be an automotive/electrical engineer.Automotive DesignLine Blog 9/29/2004 Post a commentIt's a good time to be an automotive/electrical engineer.
We've all seen the statistics and factoids about how much electronics is
going into cars these days, and it's cool. A Mercedes S-class has more than
65 microprocessors; the controversial BMW 7-series is purported to have more
than 100. That's a lot of chips.

Bringing back the excitementBlog 9/29/2004 Post a commentJoe Costello, former Cadence Design Systems CEO and winner of this year's EDA Consortium Phil Kaufman award, recently spoke of a lack of vision and excitement in the EDA industry.

Semiconductor inventory pain is in effectBlog 9/27/2004 Post a commentWhen the semiconductor industry began its rapid revenue deterioration in the fourth quarter of 2000, many industry pundits cited excess inventory as the cause of all the trouble. Indeed, at least on the surface, the evidence was there. That quarter, semiconductor inventory in the supply chain moved from 15 percent excess to 46 percent excess. It later became clear, however, that the cause of the semiconductor industry's troubles was a collapse in end demand, particularly in the enterprise sector

Voice chips finally take offBlog 9/27/2004 Post a commentAfter a long wait, the voice-over-Internet Protocol market is off and running. In the U.S., Verizon is poised to move tens of millions of subscribers to VoIP; SBC offers hosted VoIP services; and Yahoo Broadband has signed up more than 3 million VoIP subscribers.

Fall risingBlog 9/27/2004 Post a commentShaking off summer's sloth, we head into fall with key initiatives and features designed to enhance the news and information feed you get from EE Times.

An analyst on Intersil: Very committed to the PC spaceBlog 9/24/2004 Post a commentA number of observers have wondered whether Intersil was losing its edge in the power management device market. International Rectifier, for example, reported design wins on Pentium motherboards and server cards - places where Intersil maintained hegemony. American Technology Research's Doug Freedman went to an analyst meeting Thursday (September 23rd), and reported "they seemed very committed to the PC space."

Truths, lies and FPGA prototypesBlog 9/23/2004 Post a commentAlmost anyone can place two field-programmable gate array devices on a board and declare, "Ready to prototype." This is not exactly true with two FPGAs, and unrealistic with more than five or six.

Comms security: a one-legged stoolBlog 9/20/2004 Post a commentIn these pages last month, I stressed the need for top-level executives to treat communications security as an end-to-end necessity for corporate spending. However, if we flip the telescope around and look at security spending from the point of view of crypto or firewall specialists, it's easy to exaggerate the impact of a security miniboom on overall corporate IT trends.

When custom ASICs aren't the answerBlog 9/17/2004 Post a commentIn researching an upcoming article on consumer electronics, I made this assumption that turned out wrong: Custom ASICs would be the solution of choice, given their lower costs at high volumes.

FPGA's vs. ASIC'sBlog 9/13/2004 Post a commentDeciding between ASICs and FPGAs requires designers to answer tough questions concerning costs, tool availability and effectiveness, as well as how best to present the information to management to guarantee support throughout the design process.

WLAN deployments: Let's get denseBlog 9/13/2004 Post a commentRemember the days when long-distance rates dropped at 5 p.m.? I used to plan my day around that, delaying those lengthy calls to California. Times change, of course, but old habits take a little longer.

A quick guide to e-voting issuesBlog 9/13/2004 Post a commentOur country is facing a potential threat that's more imminent than any of the environmental issues I usually talk about here. What's got me worried is a series of documented irregularities, operational problems and design flaws experienced by many of the electronic voting systems that will be used in this fall's presidential election.

Freedman on Linear Technology Corp: Summer weakness continuesBlog 9/8/2004 Post a commentWe periodically republish recommendations from Doug Freedman of American Technology Research because they shed good light on what kinds of analog parts are going through the supply chain. We do not necessarily agree (or disagree) with his recommendations. In this report, Doug is being kind to Linear Technology, even though he sees that company experiencing the same kind of third-quarter slow downs as its competitors. The full text of his report is here.

To fab or not to fab? Consider the statsBlog 9/6/2004 Post a commentFor as long as I can remember, passionate semiconductor industry participants and investors have pondered the question: "Which business model is superior: fabless or IDM?" This debate has always been theoretical, often qualitative and mostly anecdotal.

Student's dilemmaBlog 9/6/2004 Post a commentYou worry about your design job-your very rewarding design job-being shipped off to Bangalore and your career being turned upside down.

Needed: smarter NICsBlog 9/6/2004 Post a commentAs network speed increases faster than processor speed, a crossover point is looming that will create opportunities for a new class of product: protocol processors.

Are you a champion of change?Blog 9/1/2004 Post a commentTwo stories in this month's issue deal with e-procurement  the Motorola Inc. cover story on page 38 and the General Dynamics case study on page 58. Both companies have revamped their procurement processes, invested heavily in supply chain software tools and are reporting dramatic results from using the Web. In Motorola's case, the results were so impressive that the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences selected the company and its software vendor Emptoris Inc.

Behind scheduleBlog 9/1/2004 Post a commentThe glass may be half full or it may be half empty, but either way we are talking half measures. That's the worrying conclusion from a recent environmental-compliance survey conducted by Electronics Supply & Manufacturing and Design Chain Associates, and underwritten by Avnet Inc.

Secrets to a successful allianceBlog 9/1/2004 Post a commentEvery day OEM managers are faced with the challenges of creating time lines and getting products delivered on schedule. A common solution is to partner with a contract manufacturer or original design manufacturer to get the product designed, built and tested for timely delivery to your customers.

The OEM evolutionBlog 9/1/2004 Post a commentDecades ago, OEMs began outsourcing materials, but nobody foresaw the avalanche to come. Today, OEMs outsource everything from system and semiconductor design and manufacturing to software and intellectual property (IP).